


The Escape

by radiofreekerberos



Series: Ocean of Storms [2]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Galra Keith (Voltron), mer!Keith, mermaid au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-28
Updated: 2018-04-28
Packaged: 2019-04-29 04:43:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,880
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14465268
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/radiofreekerberos/pseuds/radiofreekerberos
Summary: For years, he’d listened to the click-clack of their hard-soled shoes slowly striking the concrete floors of the bunker where he and his mother had been held for as long as he could remember. He would hear them echoing down the long corridor leading to the chamber where he’d sat huddled and shivering in his cold dark container long before anyone ever came into view. Long before blind panic turned to resigned dread.or, the events leading up to Flashback from Keith's point of view.





	The Escape

**Author's Note:**

> Bet you thought I'd forgotten about this series, nope!

Experience had taught him to keep to the shadows. Be as unobtrusive as possible. Make himself appear small and weak. Never let anyone suspect the truth, because he’d spent enough time watching his keepers through the thick walls of glass surrounding his cell to know that he could copy their forms if he chose to. They wouldn’t like it. They’d punish him for it.

For years, he’d listened to the click-clack of their hard-soled shoes slowly striking the concrete floors of the bunker where he and his mother had been held for as long as he could remember. He would hear them echoing down the long corridor leading to the chamber where he’d sat huddled and shivering in his cold dark container long before anyone ever came into view. Long before blind panic turned to resigned dread.

It was empty save for him since they’d moved his mother to another cell in a separate chamber. The weaker she’d become the more hostile she’d grown towards him, until she’d openly attacked him one night, in full view of their captors. She’d launched herself at him, snarling and gnashing her teeth and savagely raked her long black claws across his chest, calling him a nameless abomination, unwanted and unloved.

He hadn’t fought back. Perhaps she’d meant to kill him and then kill herself. She spoke of it sometimes in her more fevered moments, in the secret language their human captors didn’t understand. Sometimes the hybrid wanted her to do it and told her so with his eyes. He didn’t know many words. None of the men talked or interacted with him and they discouraged talking between him and his mother by randomly changing the environment inside the tank. His mother couldn’t adapt as well as he could. Her shifting abilities were more limited. He learned not to speak to keep the men from punishing her.

In the end, they’d pulled her off him and dragged her kicking and screaming from the chamber. He’d watched her go in wide-eyed silence from the corner of the cell. She never came back, though he could still hear her howling in enraged pain for several days afterward. He’d huddled, naked and shivering in the farthest corner of the cell, pressing his hands over his ears to block out her wretched cries. They’d filled his cell with salt water soon after that, forcing him to shift into a form more suited to his new environment. The sounds of his mother’s misery grew muffled and easier to block out. He’d mistaken it for kindness until he’d realized he couldn’t name the day she finally went silent.

They kept the tank filled with water and added a filter. The hybrid absorbed the oxygen through the gills that had opened along his sides, just above legs that had fused into a thickly coiled tail glowing softly with lavender colored bioluminescence. He spent weeks floating alone in the tank, missing his mother’s touch, keeping to the shadows so as not to attract too much attention, but the men seemed preoccupied with something. Unfamiliar words tumbled from their lips. They seemed tense and more heavily armed than usual.

An explosion rocked the tank; the entire bunker. The hybrid shot from the shadows and pressed his small face against the glass, blinking at the chaos erupting outside his cell. Men were running and shouting in panic. The air was thick with smoke. A soldier appeared, right outside the tank, and the hybrid flinched away from him. The soldier put up his hands and spoke quietly, though the hybrid couldn't make out the words through the thick wall of water between them. The soldier seemed… ashamed. 

He placed some sort of device against the glass and motioned for the hybrid to back away. The hybrid got the idea. He retreated to the farthest corner of the tank. The device pulsed. Dozens of tiny fissures appeared in the tank, crawling out from the device in an expanding spiderweb of unraveling cracks. A loud crackling roar unsettled the water and the hybrid cringed. He shivered inside the vibrating tank until the glass shattered, falling away in jagged chunks as he was swept out in a rush of spilling water. 

The soldier stood his ground against the rushing water, though he shivered inside his wet uniform because it was cold. He helped the hybrid to his feet, he had feet again. He appeared mostly human in his true form, save for the pale lavender skin and delicately pointed ears.

“I’m sorry,” the soldier said, dropping to one knee in front of him. The hybrid brushed long dark hair from his eyes and blinked at him in confusion. “I didn't know they were doing this, I didn't even know you existed until a few weeks ago.” The hybrid understood the words, but they made no sense to him. His brow furrowed and the soldier sighed. “Look, I don’t expect you to understand this, I’m not even sure I understand it myself, but I’m your father. I’m your father kid, and I’ve come to get you out of this place.”

A second explosion rocked the bunker, sending them both sprawling and the hybrid looked up to see several hooded figures racing down the corridor through the thick coiling smoke, their faces obscured by illuminated masks. His father didn't seem to notice. “Now’s our chance,” he said, “while they’re distracted.” 

He scooped the hybrid up in his arms and ran off in the opposite direction. The hybrid tensed, his tiny claws digging into his father’s shoulder in alarm. His father grunted softly, but didn't threaten to punish him the way his keepers did when he made the mistake of showing his teeth or claws. He relaxed slightly and squinted at the chaotic scene unfolding over his father’s shoulder. One of the hooded figures emerged from the thick smoke, hugely imposing with a long rapier like tail sweeping the floor. The hybrid startled at the sight of his mother’s limp body casually draped over his shoulder. “Muh… Mother,” he murmured softly and his father’s arms tightened around him.

“I’m sorry, I couldn't get to her,” he told the hybrid breathlessly. “She was too heavily guarded. I’ll try to come back for her later.”

The hybrid pressed his lips together as his father charged into one of the metal lifts his keepers used to travel around the bunker and looked up in curiosity as the small chamber slipped into the floor. It passed through several levels of the complex before coming to a stop in a subterranean sewer beneath the bunker. A long cement trench was carved into the ground. Foul smelling water flowed out of it through a grate in the wall that emptied into the bay beyond. 

Loud angry voices followed them down the lift shaft and the hybrid looked up to find a knot of soldiers scowling down at him. One of them leveled a rifle at him and the hybrid flinched when a large dart whistled past his head and bounced off the concrete wall behind him. The metal chamber began to rise and the hybrid’s father leapt at it, destroying the control panel with a single blast from his side-arm. The soldiers up top shouted for ropes and a few more darts whistled past the hybrid’s head. 

“Come on,” his father urged, once again whisking the hybrid into his arms and shielding him with his body as metal darts bounced off the walls around them. He put him down in front of the metal grate. There wasn’t enough space between the bars for the hybrid to squeeze through. His father wrapped his hands around the bars and braced his legs against the wall and heaved, but the grate remained stuck fast to the concrete wall. The hybrid understood. He placed his small hands on the bars between his father’s and tugged. The grate came away easily in his hands, along with a good portion of the concrete wall surrounding it.

“Jesus,” his father breathed. 

The hybrid propped the unwieldy grate against the wall beside the opening as several nylon ropes dropped from the lift shaft, sweeping the slick floor like bright yellow snakes. 

“Shit,” his father said, taking the hybrid’s small face in his hands. The hybrid closed his eyes, he couldn't help it. His father’s hands were gentle and warm. “I wish we had more time,” he said, the nylon ropes behind him growing taut with the weight of the soldiers using them to propel down the shaft. “You have to go,” but the hybrid hesitated. He didn’t want to leave his father behind to be punished. He tilted his head towards the murky bay. 

“No, I can’t come with you. I can’t breathe under water like you can,” his father said, ruffling the hybrid’s shaggy head with a wan smile. “Go, now, get away from this place, as far and as fast as you can. Don't ever come back. They’ll kill you if you do.”

A soldier dropped into the chamber and with one final glance at his father’s smiling face, the hybrid leapt through the opening, shifting mid-air and hitting the murky water with a soft splash. A hail of real gunfire erupted all around him, laser-blasts turning the murky water to boiling soup. With one powerful sweep of his long tail the hybrid was gone, shooting through the dark water with the glow from his own bioluminescence lighting the way.

After he’d spent several hours swimming up the coast, he risked a quick stop to get his bearings. He surfaced just enough to raise his eyes above the water. The sky above his head had turned dark and ominous and the hybrid smiled. It would be difficult for his captors to chase him in a storm. He chanced to lift his head above the choppy waters and saw a bridge in the distance, barely visible in the gray mist. He’d heard his captors speak of it a few times. He knew that open water lay beyond it.

He was free. For the first time in his life he was free. Alone, but free. The hybrid’s chest hitched slightly at the thought. The whine of a motor startled him and the hybrid ducked beneath the waves as a small vessel motored past, heading further out into the bay though all the others he’d passed had been heading back towards the mainland. A slightly older boy with dark hair and storm-colored eyes was hunched inside. He was crying, shaking with gasping sobs. The hybrid swallowed and watched him pass, too overcome with grief to pay any mind to the impending storm he was heading straight into.

The hybrid could smell it, open water. He could taste it in the salty wind. Once he reached it, he’d be safe, impossible for his captors to find inside its hidden depths. The boy was no one to him. The hybrid knew nothing about him… except that in this moment the boy had no one in the world to look out for him, no one except him. 

The hybrid took one last thoughtful look at the mist covered bridge in the distance, then turned with one flick of his powerful tail and followed the boy into the oncoming storm.

**Author's Note:**

> Find me on the [tumblr](https://radiofreekerberos.tumblr.com/)


End file.
